Her bird construct was there. Unharmed.
She didn’t know how it had survived the destruction. Kneeling, she touched its skull lightly. “Hey, little one, I am so glad to see you.”
It whirred at her, and then it pivoted and hopped toward the cellar.
“You hid down there? Clever.” She wondered if any of her other creations had had the chance to escape the fire. She hadn’t seen any of the rag dolls, though she hadn’t expected to—they would have burned like tinder.
The bird led the way down the stairs, and she joined it, descending into the darkness.
Behind her, Zera said, “You’re just . . . following that thing into the dark. See, this is what I’m talking about when I say plan. You could ask me if I have any cat-eye talismans. I do. Want one? Offers better night vision. Or if you want to preserve my talismans for emergencies, we could use a lantern. Nice, simple solution. How about a lantern? You don’t even have to do or say anything to use one.” When Kreya didn’t answer, she said, “Okay then. I am going to grab a lantern. Don’t . . . Just . . . I’ll be right back.”
The darkness folded around her like a coat. She stepped carefully, knowing how much trash had been shoved down here, knowing it was all wrecked and burnt and nothing would be where she’d left it. Her toes collided with an object, and she felt ahead of her, climbing over it.
Ahead of her, the bird whirred, and she followed the noise.
“So very clever,” she said, praising it.
The villagers wouldn’t know the cellar led into the caves, but her construct had remembered. Kreya hadn’t known it was that bright.
Listening hard, she heard the murmuring, nonsense words tumbling over one another, and she smiled in the darkness, as much as her heart ached. “My little ones.”
She felt fabric brush against her as the rag dolls surrounded her. Stopping, she knelt, and they clambered over her. She stroked them as if they were living pets in need of reassurance. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here. You must have been so scared. But I’m here now. I’ll take care of you. I wish . . .” Her voice broke. She swallowed and continued. “I wish you could tell me what they did with Jentt. Did they destroy him? Did they take him with them? How long ago were they here, and what direction did they go?”
She knew they couldn’t answer, and she wasn’t certain whether they could understand any of what she said. They continued to crawl over her, nestling against her neck, circling around her waist, pressing against her as if her closeness comforted them.
And then they shrieked and scattered as light flickered against the wall.
“Come back, it’s okay,” Kreya called.
Zera carried the lantern into the cellar. “Oh, look at that, the Shield of Lothmenan—or what’s left of it.” She poked at the shield with her foot. The heat from the fire had melted the designs, though the shape was still intact. “Where’s your little atrocity?”
Kreya took the lantern from Zera and climbed over the rubble in the cellar. She pulled aside a crumbling barrel and squeezed behind it.
Gently, Zera said behind her, “You shouldn’t get your hopes up. One little bird can’t have been strong enough to carry Jentt’s body to safety.”
Kreya hadn’t let herself hope that, even to form the thought in her mind, but now that Zera had said it out loud, it suddenly did seem possible. She rushed into the caves. Behind her, she heard Zera swear and hurry after her.
The bird construct was waiting for her inside, as were the rag dolls.
“Oh, they survived,” Zera said. “Yay.”
“On their own, they’re weak,” Kreya said, her heart pounding so hard it hurt. Please, please . . . She couldn’t even articulate the hope. It was too delicate. “Together, they’re strong.”
“Like us. Except not. Because I’m badass on my own, thank you.”
They followed the rag dolls and the bird deeper into the cave. Kreya thrust the lantern before her, hoping with every fiber in her body that its light would fall across the one shape in the world she wanted to see.
How deep did they flee? And had they really carried Jentt this far? Could they have? Why would they? Maybe she’d misunderstood. Maybe she was wasting time, when she could have been chasing the villagers. After all, the constructs weren’t—
She halted as the cave widened. Here, natural light filtered through a slit in the cavern. It shimmered as dust from the cave lingered in the air, so that the beam seemed solid, as if she could touch it. It fell on a slab of granite, and lying on the stone . . .
“I’d asked them to give him sunlight,” she heard her own voice say as she stared at the linen-wrapped body on the stone. “He always wanted to see the sunrise and sunset, every time I woke him. They remembered that.”
“I don’t believe it,” Zera said. “Your little monsters did it!”
Kreya knelt. “So clever, my little ones.”
They swarmed her like happy puppies.
“Okay then,” Zera said. “I’ll get the bones. You do the spell. Before a torch-wielding villager comes back to check on his handiwork, because I’ve had enough of this shit day.”
Kreya laughed. “As always, you elevate a meaningful moment to pure poetry.”
Zera grunted at her. “I’m taking the lantern. You keep the atrocities.”
As Zera disappeared back into the tunnel, toward the tower, Kreya moved to the granite slab. She sat beside Jentt’s body, while the rag dolls huddled around her. She had nearly lost him, for a second time. “Never again,” she swore.
Chapter Nine
Kreya did not need the book.
She would have burned it herself after this final spell anyway, or so she told herself. It was best it was gone, though she’d mourn the rest of her library. Later.
Carefully, she unwrapped Jentt’s body. The sun was shifting from the slice in the cave ceiling, and she didn’t want to lose the light before this was complete. Not that she needed the sun for the spell. She just wanted Jentt to wake with sun caressing his face.
All she truly needed was the words, the bones, and a knife.
As she unwrapped him, the rag dolls rolled the linen strips into balls. They hadn’t strayed more than a few feet from her ankles since the bird construct had brought her into the caves. She didn’t mind. She hadn’t known constructs were capable of feeling things like fear or loyalty, but she supposed these were different—they’d been with her for so long.
She wondered again at the soldiers on the field, lasting despite having no one to maintain them. Unless they did. But she shoved that worry away. Now was the time to focus.
“Yep, still dead,” Zera said, peering over her shoulder.
“I need to concentrate.”
“You know, he might be enjoying the extra sleep.”
Kreya leveled a look at her.
“Just eliminating some of the tension,” Zera said. “It helps.”
“It actually doesn’t.” She made a shooing motion with her fingers, and a few of the rag dolls clustered around Zera’s feet, chattering at her. Zera backed up rapidly after that, and Kreya suppressed a smile.
Maybe it helped a little.
She turned back to Jentt. He didn’t look as if he were resting peacefully. There was a motionlessness to death that wasn’t the same as rest. If it was peaceful, it was the serenity of stone. A lack of breath, not a breath suspended.
She wondered what kind of nightmares he’d have after this was over.
It’s time, she thought.
She inhaled. Steadied herself. Picked up the knife.
Opening her hand, she sliced her palm and spread her blood over the first of the human bones. “Take my day, take my night, take my sunrise, take my life.” She then sliced Jentt’s sternum over his heart. She pressed the bone against the bloodless wound. “Take my breath, take my blood. Iri nascre, murro sai enri. Iri prian, murro ken fa. Iri sangra sheeva lai. Ancre murro sai enzal. Iri, iri, nascre ray.”
She repeated this, bone after bone.
As the spell spread, the flesh of his chest absorbed the bones, and the bloodied bones dissolved within him, becoming a part of him. She spilled more and more of her own blood, until her vision began to swim.
Dimly, she heard Zera’s voice cautioning her. She was being too reckless with her cuts. She shouldn’t slice so deep. She couldn’t maintain this pace.
The rag dolls clustered around her, supporting her.
Even with them, she began to sway. Not done yet. Must hold on.
She felt hands on her elbows.
“You need to stop,” Zera said in her ear. “You’re losing too much blood.”
“Help me,” Kreya murmured.
Zera began to draw her back, away from Jentt, but Kreya struggled, shaking her head. “Help me finish,” Kreya said.
Zera swore at her, but then Kreya felt Zera’s hands on her wrist. She helped her squeeze more blood to spread on the bones. Kreya said the words as Zera guided her hand, pressing the bone into Jentt’s body.
At last, Kreya staggered back. “Enough.”
Half her life, drained into Jentt, so that he would live.
They’d live and they’d die together this time. Barring accident. Barring murder. Barring disaster. And barring my getting any of the words wrong. However many years were left of her natural life span, they now each had half that. But they’d have it together.
Sagging against Zera, Kreya felt faint. A giggle bubbled out of her lips.
“Okay, that was way too much blood to lose with not enough food,” Zera said, wrapping a strip of linen around Kreya’s hand, tight to cut off the loss of any more blood. “You need juice and—whoa, that was fast.” Her eyes wide, she gawked over Kreya’s shoulder. “Hey, Jentt.”
Calm and warm, Jentt’s voice filled the cave. “Hey, Zera.”
She lifted her head to see her husband, sitting up in a pool of sunlight in the moments before the light slipped beyond the slit in the ceiling. He looked as if he were glowing in gold, or perhaps that was just her vision blurring from blood loss. She didn’t care which it was. He was awake and alive, and he’d stay that way. “I did it. Wheee.” She lacked the strength for a proper cheer. Her head felt as if it were swimming through murk.
“Blood loss?” Jentt asked.
“Yes, she failed to warn me about that,” Zera said. “Any minute now she’s going to faint dramatically so we’ll make a fuss and worry over her.” She was still pressing steadily on Kreya’s palm, stanching the blood. Kreya was fairly certain it had stopped flowing a while ago. She hadn’t cut an artery, after all. She’d been careful. Just the right amount of blood for the right amount of bones. It was only that she’d used a lot of bones, to buy the necessary years. “How do you feel, dead boy?” Zera asked Jentt. “Any dramatic side effects for you that Kreya conveniently forgot to tell me?”
“Right as rain,” he said.
He tilted his head back to feel the last of the sun as it slipped beyond the slit in the stone ceiling and the cave fell into shadows. She saw him breathe deeply, then hoist himself off the slab of granite. She opened her mouth to tell him to recover more first, but somehow the words wouldn’t form in her mouth. Her tongue felt thick.
Suddenly, Jentt was beside her, lifting her onto the granite slab. “She needs sugar, to replace what she lost.”
“We’re lacking access to the larder right now,” Zera said. “Hang on, though. I might have . . .”
Kreya didn’t hear the rest of what Zera said or Jentt’s response. She felt as if she were floating in an ocean, with the night sky overhead. I’ve never seen an ocean, she thought. I’d like to, someday. She felt liquid drops touch her lips. She licked and then swallowed.
A few minutes later, her eyes fluttered open. She thought it was minutes. It could have been hours, weeks, years, but no, Jentt was here, with Zera. Her rag dolls and the bird construct were pressed all around her. She petted them, reassuring them, as she sat up.
“She’s awake!” Zera said. “Good to see you back in the land of the living, love.” Then she snorted at her own joke.
Jentt caressed her cheek and then checked her pulse in her neck. “You scared us.”
Kreya smiled at him. “Promise I won’t do it again.” Still feeling weak, she didn’t try to stand yet, but sitting was fine. She couldn’t stop staring and smiling goofily at him. We did it. It worked! “I’m retired now. No more bone work. I think we should travel. See beyond the mountains. Swim in the ocean.”
“Or,” Zera said, “you could come live with me in Cerre.”
She liked that Zera had offered—that was a very good sign that Zera had forgiven her for involving her in all this. But it wasn’t practical. “Too many questions to answer.”
Jentt agreed. “I don’t relish three thousand iterations of the ‘why aren’t you dead’ conversation. A quiet life in Kreya’s tower is fine for me. And we can travel, when you’re strong enough.”
“You didn’t tell him why we’re in the caves?” Kreya asked Zera.
“Kind of busy here with you fainting and almost dying and all.”
Jentt looked from one to the other of them. “You didn’t choose this location for its ambiance? What happened?”
“Someone—multiple someones, most likely—burned the tower down.” It hurt more to say than she’d expected. She’d felt such relief when she saw the rag dolls had saved Jentt. But still, that tower had been her home for twenty-five years. She thought of the books in her library, so many of them irreplaceable, collected over a lifetime of study. Her notes, taken painstakingly. Maps of Vos. Histories. Poetry. Journals of past bone makers. She had meant it, about destroying Eklor’s book after she’d brought Jentt back, even though it held other knowledge, such as theories on how to adapt the resurrection spell to heal illnesses and purge poison. But the rest? It was painful.
It also reminded her of something urgent.
“But there is a more serious problem: Eklor’s soldiers.”
“What about them? They’re dead, right? Twenty-five years dead?”
“So were you, Jentt,” Zera said.
He looked at her, then Kreya, who explained, “Remnants from Eklor’s army are still functioning in the forbidden zone.” Succinctly, she told Jentt where they’d gone, what they’d done, and what they’d seen on the plains.
Predictably, he freaked out. “You went where and did what?”
She ignored him and said to Zera, “We have to tell Grand Master Lorn. What he chooses to do about them is beyond our control, but he needs to be told so he can make an informed decision based on all the facts.”
Zera objected. “I told you before: we don’t have to tell him anything. Let the remnants decay on their own. They’re separated from all of humanity. What harm can they do?”
“You don’t like that the job’s unfinished,” Jentt said to Kreya. He was still scowling at her as if he had a hundred more things he wanted to say, most of them critical of her choices.
“I wish I still believed it was finished,” Kreya said. It didn’t make sense that they could be functioning so well without any maintenance whatsoever. But it couldn’t be Eklor—Zera was right about that—so she was content to let someone else investigate. “If we warn the grand master, he’ll be obligated to look into it.”
Jentt covered her hands with his.
“There are zero ways you can explain without answering questions,” Zera said. “None. Zip. Zilch. You remember Lorn, right? He’ll jail you if you don’t tell him how you know. He’ll burn you if you do. Leave it be and forget what you saw and heard.”
Kreya felt herself still.
What she’d seen was inhuman soldiers.
What she’d heard . . .
She’d thought she’d imagined hearing Eklor’s laugh. After all, she’d had hallucinations so often in the past, living alone for so long, that she didn’t trust her own psyche. “What did you hear? When we were leaving.”
“I heard nothing,” Zera said too quickly, twisting her hands
. “The wind.”
“Zera.”
“He had a fucked-up laugh. I remember it. And I thought I heard it, okay? Is that what you want me to say? You want me to admit that I’m still damaged. I look put together, I look like I have it all, I look like I’ve moved on. But no. As badly as I tried to leave it all behind. Eklor. Jentt’s death. You, abandoning all of us. And the aftermath, when everyone wanted to celebrate and I felt like I’d died. Guess it’s still implanted in my subconscious, tearing at me, no matter how much I’ve achieved, and when we were back there at his tower with his atrocities around us again, I hallucinated his laugh. Happy now?” Zera sucked in air but didn’t allow Kreya to speak. “That’s why I don’t want to reopen this wound. It’s over. The war ended. We won. And now we even have Jentt back! Yay! Let the atrocities have the plain, and let me have a future free of those horrors.”
Kreya felt Jentt watching her. He knew her better than anyone, even with the secrets she’d kept from him. He was squeezing her hand as if he knew what she was going to say. Carefully, she said, “I heard his laugh, too.”
“Shared hallucination,” Zera said dismissively.
Kreya shook her head.
“Why not? We shared the trauma. Makes sense we’d share the nightmares.”
“I heard it as we flew from the tower. When did you hear it?”
Zera paced through the cave, and the rag dolls skittered out of her way. “He’s dead.”
Mildly, Jentt twisted her earlier comment back at her. “So was I.”
Zera glared at him. “Kreya and I had this argument before, and she agreed that he’s definitely dead.”
“Before I knew you heard him too!” This changed everything! Couldn’t Zera see that? It was one thing if Kreya had hallucinated his laugh, but if they both—
“I imagined hearing him too,” Zera corrected. “Very important difference. He died, his apprentice was caught, and there was no one left to revive him.”
“I don’t know how he did it, but he could have found a way,” Kreya said. He’d done the impossible before. By the bones, she’d done the impossible just now! Jentt was living proof that bone magic could be stretched and bent. “If he wasn’t fully dead when we left him—”
The Bone Maker Page 12
